His reshuffling of agencies
is to be submitted today to the City Council
as part of the operating budget

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Water distribution, sewage disposal and refuse collection would come under the same departmental roof in Mayor Jeremy Harris' plan to overhaul city government and prevent a $75 million budget shortfall.

Harris is required to submit a balanced operating budget to the City Council today. The budget is expected to be in the neighborhood of the $1 billion budget proposed over the past few years.

The broad-scale reshuffling of agencies likely will require more than just City Council approval, however. Many of the departments and agencies are required by City Charter and given specific duties. That means Oahu voters would need to approve some of the changes as well.

All 22 city departments and three agencies under the control of the mayor would be merged, see a change in function or be dissolved, with the exception of the Corporation Counsel's office.

For instance, the Planning and Land Utilization departments would merge as has been widely speculated.

A new Budget and Fiscal Services Department would combine the existing Budget and Finance departments.

Even the Police Department will take on the added function of enforcing parking codes, now the function of the Department of Transportation Services.

Besides the Corporation Counsel's office, which handles the city's civil legal issues, the Prosecutor's Office and the City Council would remain unchanged under the Harris plan.

"It's going to be very dramatic -- the most dramatic, far-reaching reorganization ever announced by the City and County of Honolulu," said Harris spokeswoman Carol Costa.

Fourteen of the 25 executive agencies in the city would remain when the dust settles, assuming the mayor gets his way.

One city-hall source said Managing Director Bob Fishman, Budget Director Malcolm Tom and Chief of Staff Ben Lee would act as a three-person management team under the reorganization.

Fishman would be chief operating officer and be in charge of line agencies. Tom would be chief financial officer and lead all financial matters. Lee would be chief support officer and head up such areas as facilities management.

The plan comes after Friday's announcement by Harris that 185 people would be laid off as part of the impending reorganization, saving the city between $9 million and $10 million.

The mayor said 150 other positions are projected to be lost through attrition.

The new Environmental Services Department would incorporate the existing Honolulu Board of Water Supply and the Wastewater Management Department, as well as the solid-waste, refuse, recycling, stream and storm water cleaning sections of the Public Works Department.

Entwining the functions of waste-water and solid-waste disposal is not a new idea. Hawaii, Maui and Kauai counties all have one public-works department that oversees both services.

The more eye-raising issue is placing water distribution under the same department.

The administration should have a major booster in City Council Budget Chairman John Henry Felix, who has lobbied for consolidating the water and waste-water duties in the past and reiterated his support for that plan this morning.

As expected, Harris is also proposing a merger of the Planning and Land Utilization departments. A twist, however, is that he is also calling for the permit functions of the Building Department to create what's been tentatively dubbed the Planning and Permitting Department.

All three other counties in the state have only a Planning Department and no separate Land Utilization Department, as is the case on Oahu.

The Planning Department deals with broader, long-term planning issues, while Land Utilization is primarily concerned with zoning matters.

Since becoming mayor in 1994, Harris has spoken of the need to streamline government and make it more efficient.

Tom said the the streamlining is essential now in light of the budget constraints caused by lower property tax revenues, the city's main source of income.

"We can no longer fine-tune our government operations to generate the operational savings that we need to offset our declining revenue base," Costa said.

Felix said it appears at first glance that the mayor's plan can meet the city's shortfall.

He cautioned, however, that he and his colleagues will have many questions.